


Beside You In Time

by Sigrid_Storrada



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Consensual, Dream Sex, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Het, Massage, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smut, Spoilers, Synths (Humans)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 09:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 20,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigrid_Storrada/pseuds/Sigrid_Storrada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lonely, disillusioned widow Nora finds herself falling for her synthetic best friend. Institute ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Part I: The Persistence of Loss**

She had watched her husband die.

It may have been years ago, but to her the wound was fresh; only months old, in fact. To know he was killed fighting to protect their son like a hero was poor consolation on lonely nights.

In dreams she would see his face. The tall blond with bright, fair eyes and a shy smile. The softly-spoken one with the deep scars across his cheeks. Quiet but fierce; strong but gentle.

Only, in her dreams he was always leaving.

Sometimes she would never actually see him, but she just knew somehow that he was gone and never coming back. Other times he was there, just pottering about their home and going about his business, and she could touch him and speak to him but he would never acknowledge her. She would call out to him – scream at him – but he wouldn’t hear. She was like a ghost in her own house.

 

But by far the worst dreams were not actually dreams at all; they were memories. The day she awoke, bitterly cold, with cramping muscles and a disoriented mind. Or the day she stood there, trapped and helpless, as they shot her husband and stole her baby.

Those memories would play out in her sleeping mind unaltered and, just like on that day, there was nothing she could do to stop it; and nothing she could do to stop herself from reliving it.

On those nights she would wake with a start, her nerves fraught and her heart racing for a few hard moments, before she could process that she was in fact sitting in her bed, alone in the darkness.

And then she would touch the skin of her cheeks to find them damp, and then the tears would come and they would not stop.

 

During the day, however, Nora worked hard to keep herself from idleness. She patched buildings, pulled weeds, planted crops, laughed with friends and comforted strangers. She rose at dawn every morning eager to start – no matter how poorly she slept through the night – and fell into bed every evening, utterly exhausted.

She was the leader of a handful of thriving settlements, to whom she provided friendship, guidance, and help with protection, provisioning and supplies, and when she was not busy with them she would trek all over the Commonwealth, lending a hand wherever one was needed.

Never before had she been at the centre of more people in her life – and these were good people too; kind, open-hearted people whose foremost concerns were their families, friends, and finding somewhere safe to live out their lives – goals which, now more than ever, Nora had come to appreciate as the only things really worth a damn in a person’s life.

 

And yet, despite all her relentless effort, never before had she felt so isolated; so deeply and profoundly alone.

No matter how busy she kept herself, it seemed somehow that every deed she performed, for good or ill, was tainted by either that that voracious, bitter longing that boiled in the pit of her stomach, or by her desperate desire to get rid of it.

 

She thought that it would all end when she found Shaun.

Nate was gone. But as hard as that was for her to come to terms with, she knew that when she found her son they would get through it together, and everything would be all right.

So she collected toys. She decorated his bedroom. She turned her old, pre-war suburb of Sanctuary Hills into a thriving, busy settlement. Safe and sound – a good place, by Commonwealth standards, for a young kid to grow up.

 

And then the day came. A day when the pile of bodies she had so single-mindedly been building would finally be high enough for her to reach her son.

The plan was simple: shoot anything that stands in her way. Bring back her boy.

And she found him.

Her baby. But no longer as small as she’d hoped. Shaun was an old man.

She nearly didn’t believe him – she didn’t want to believe him – but, in the very same moment, somewhere deep inside her she knew it was true.

Gazing over the smooth curve of the old man’s forehead; the glimmer in his light-coloured eyes; that nose and those lips that she would recognise anywhere – her baby had grown up to be the spitting image of Nate, of her husband. And it was all she could do to stay on her feet and not let herself drown in that hungry sea of despair that had threatened to overwhelm her since she had awoken to find the whole world in ruins.

 

Here he was, at long last, and he was already at the end of his life. And she had missed it all.

The damn Institute had taken everything from her; her husband, her happiness, and now her only child.

All those years together, stolen. All those hugs and kisses, all the laughter and the sadness. All those cuts and bruises left unkissed; those bedtime stories unread. All those friends she hadn’t met, and the difficulties she hadn’t been able to help him through. 

Who had taught him to talk? Who rocked him to sleep when he cried?

Who helped him with his homework, or taught him to be considerate of others?

Who was his first love? What were his dreams and his fears?

 

A human life, in all its joys and miseries. Its triumphs and setbacks. Its love and pain.

All stolen from her.

 

Tears pooled and spilt over in her eyes. Funny how she could go from feeling so furious – so vengeful – to so weak and bereft in so little time.

 

The former leader of the Institute – the man responsible for tearing their family apart and irreparably changing her life forever – was long dead by now; just cold bones in the ground. There was no vengeance to be had here.

Had anybody else tried to persuade her of the nobility of the Institute’s goals in that moment, she would have sooner shot them than sided with them. But the one person left who held that much sway over her heart was her Shaun. And old man, perhaps, but still her baby. He would always be her baby.

So she let him preach to her of the supposed ‘good’ of the very organisation that had stolen the most precious things to her in the world, and then so carelessly crushed forever the one dream that had kept her going since she had broken free from the vault; to raise her boy. 

 

It felt wrong in her heart, but there was some sense in his arguments. Enough for her to suspend her judgement, perhaps. Enough for her to agree to hear more; enough to make her agree to a truce with the Institute, if only stay close to her son.

Though, when she heard Shaun describe his father’s murder as he fought to protect the baby in his arms as ‘collateral damage’, it highlighted to her more than anything else how the Institute had stolen so much more than just her infant; they had stolen his mind. He may have been her son by blood, but he was a stranger by everything else.

She never imagined that she would feel this way but, if only for a fleeting moment, she was glad that Nate was not around to share this with her.

 

Nora left the Institute late the next day, her Pip-Boy fitted with a new relay and notes on her first assignment: rounding up escaped synths and dragging them back to the Institute.

To think, only two days ago she thought that she would be coming back to Sanctuary triumphant, her son in arms, ready to begin their new life together in the settlement that she had worked so hard to build.

Now, well. Now she wasn’t sure what to think.

 

It was evening on the surface when she arrived. The Institute, with it’s artificial lighting and cool, recycled air made it easy to lose track of time. But she was glad for the small amount of cover the growing darkness gave her; she would rather not be seen by anybody if it could be helped.

Glowing yellow eyes trailed her movement, the slow-burning bud of a lit cigarette betraying his position as the black figure leant against the wall of a local house; Nora felt herself being watched by possibly the one man she had most wanted to avoid.

But it figured that she wouldn’t have been able to keep it from him for very long – he was a very good detective, after all.

Valentine. There was something about that old synth; something lonely and melancholic behind those wise-cracks that had made their friendship come smooth and easy, as if they had known each other for years rather than months.

Maybe, in a loose kind of way, they had. They were both pre-war folk, after all; she being perhaps one of the last pre-war humans in existence, and he – or his mind, at least – having been lifted from a pre-war cop of the same name.

There was a shared culture between them that was comforting sometimes, and they seemed to understand each other without trying: Nick always knew when to press her and when to give her space; when to crack a joke and when to offer a shoulder to cry on, and she seemed to know the same about him.

Maybe it was that they were both relics in this brave new world, or maybe it was that they had both had their families and futures destroyed by others; Nick’s own fiancée Jenny having been murdered not unlike the way Nora’s husband had been. Maybe it was a bit of both.

In any case, if Nick Valentine noticed her slink into Sanctuary that night – and he almost certainly had – he seemed to understand that she wasn’t in the mood for company, and let her withdraw into her ramshackle old home for the night without troubling her.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick had got the feeling that Nora wasn’t in the mood for visitors the night before, but he had been expecting to catch up with her the next morning.

After all, it’d been days since she’d beamed herself off into the great unknown, on the trail of the Institute of all shady organisations, and despite his best efforts he had started to get a little worried about her out there.

Sure, Nora was no ordinary woman – he’d been running with her long enough to know that she could handle herself in a shoot-out better than most. But, then again, the was the Institute they were talking about. If those guys had the technology to build walking, talking tin-men like him two-hundred years ago, who’s to say what kind of guns and synths and god-knows-what else would be waiting for her in there now.

 

She had been sleeping in a bit that morning, which was unusual for her, but Nick figured – judging by the way she’d crept in last night – she’d probably had a rough couple of days. She’d be up when she was good and ready.

When Nora hadn’t risen by noon, however, the old PI started to get a little uneasy.

Finally, when he couldn’t wait any longer, he strode over to her house and knocked loudly on her front door. It was really more of a courtesy in a small, open town like Sanctuary, but after waiting a few moments and being greeted with nothing but silence, Nick pushed open the door and let himself in.

He did a quick once-over of the place, and, sure enough, Nora was nowhere to be found.

Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, the dame had given him the slip.

He would have chuckled to himself at how crafty she’d been if it hadn’t been for that niggling little part of his brain that made his brow furrow and his imagination race with unnerving possibilities.

Whatever had happened in that Institute over the past couple of days, it wasn’t good news.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a strange feeling for Nora at first, to be on the road again without Nick after travelling together for so long. But it was best for him, she told herself, not to get mixed up in this.

Institute business. She was going out on Institute business.

She felt dirty about it, but if she owed her allegiance to anyone in this world surely it was to her son.

And anyway, she wasn’t about to bring Nick along on a synth retention job. The layers of irony in that one might just blow his processor.

But truly, if she were being honest with herself, she was also afraid of how Nick would react to her decision to work with the Institute.

Nick was a cop at heart, and an old-fashioned one at that. Unlike most people of the Commonwealth, he believed in justice. And Nora had admired that about him when she had been on the right side of justice. Now that she was doing something she felt… ethically uneasy about, she began to dread the inevitable confrontation that she knew was bound to happen between them.

After all, she was working now not only for the very organisation that had wronged her, but the same one that had wronged him too.

Some two-hundred years ago, the Institute had brought Nick into being. A prototype, by Valentine’s own reckoning. And judging by Nick’s intelligence, feeling, and capacity for independent thought – and now from having seen the inner workings of the organisation itself – it seemed a good reckoning too.

But, with all the same compassion they had shown Nora and her family, the Institute and its then-directors disposed of Valentine as soon as he had outlived his usefulness to them. And he woke-up, much as Nora had done, alone in a Commonwealth very different from the one he remembered.

 

In any case, as earnest as she was in her belief that synths deserved equal rights to organic humans, Nora finished her job that day.

And then she finished another the next day.

Weeks went by, and soon she was routinely shooting humans and stealing back the petty freedoms of the very same synths that she had, not months before, swore to another organisation that she would protect.

But as indifferently as she would call out those recall codes, she knew in her heart that she was doing something that went against her own values. And she hated herself for it.

 

And that is how Nora began to distance herself from Nick Valentine.

Not all at once, but over days, weeks, months. She knew he moved between Diamond City and Sanctuary, and so she avoided those places as often as she could. And when she could not, she was simply too busy for him. He’d bump into her, offer up a wry remark and a warm smile, and she’d bluff him off, leaving as soon as she could. Always civil with him, but always cold.

 

Nick noticed, and she knew as much. He didn’t approach her about it, but she knew all the same.

Instead, he gave her space, using the time he would have otherwise spent gunning about the Commonwealth with her to catch up on neglected cases from his detective agency in Diamond City while she ran errands for the Institute.

In time, Nora resolved to herself with a pang of regret maybe, that was that. For a brief moment in their lives, she and Nick had gotten quite close, and she would remember those few months of friendship fondly. But she was going her way, and now he was going his.


	4. Chapter 4

A month went by quickly, and then another, since Nora had reunited with her son for the first time in two centuries. And it had been about as many months when Shaun first confessed to her about his illness. An aggressive form of cancer; even the Institute doctors were having a hard time keeping it at bay. After all this time, her baby was dying.

At first she felt neither sadness nor relief.

Numbness, maybe. Emptiness, perhaps.

She wondered if she might be slowly losing the ability to feel. Nora, the first human Courser. It wasn’t until she got home to Sanctuary that night that the first wave of despair really hit her.

 

She flopped down onto her sorry old sofa in the lamp-lit living room of her crumbling home and before she knew it the tears began falling from her eyes and then she was weeping uncontrollably.

What was this life? This pointless, cruel existence?

How was it that, no matter how hard she tried, she just kept on losing everything that meant something to her?

How much more was there for her to lose?

Curled up in a defensive ball on the couch, she sobbed quietly into her knees for what felt like over an hour, until the tears, along with the last of her energy, seemed to run dry.

She found herself standing now, shuffling down the crooked hallway of her house toward the old suitcase in her bedroom where she collected up in her arms those precious artefacts that she had been saving until she had put her life back together.

Then she headed into her back garden, the neglected yard lit dimly by the kitchen light that poured out through the window.

She had had this idea for some time, but it had never before seemed like the right time to do it.

Sitting herself down now in the dirt and unkempt grass, she began to fix some pieces of wood together with nails and whitewash. When she had finished that, she hammered them painstakingly in the ground, as if they might somehow grow something new and hopeful instead of remembering something lost.

 

Finally, she stood back to observe her work; two simple white crosses, not unlike those that filled the fields of remembrance, stood back at her.

Those were built to commemorate the lives lost at the end of the first Great War, nearly four-hundred years ago now. Then, they had called that the Great War for Civilisation. She wondered why, then, did they need another two?

 

By the tallest cross, Nora lay down the old trifold American flag encased in a broken glass frame that she had taken from her bedroom suitcase. It was not the same as the one owned by her late husband, but, found on the long and weary road of her travels, it was strikingly similar. She would not have been at all surprised if she found out that it, too, had once belonged to an old veteran.

Then, against the smaller cross she lay a teddy-bear, his fabric about as old and worn out as she felt on the inside, though he was still smiling. In his welcoming arms she set down the baby rattle that had once belonged to her infant son.

 

Shaun was not yet dead, though she knew now that he did not have long, and neither cross marked the presence of a body. But to her they were a monument for their deaths anyway; the death of Nate, whose body was unlikely to ever move from the vault where he had been slain; and the death of Shaun – the death of his life with her; the death of his relationship with his father. The death of his right to have a loving family; the death of his freedom to have his own life.

These were deaths that she had to live with every day. It felt only right to have something physical in the world to commemorate that.

When she was finished, Nora walked back inside through the garage door where she passed by the old wooden cabinet that stood against the wall.

A part of her original house with Nate, she had always meant to replace it when she still believed Shaun to be young; when she still dreamt of bringing him home with her. But it hardly seemed to matter now.

On a whim, she yanked open a stubborn drawer only to find – to her surprise – a dusty old bottle of red wine lying there.

She remembered it well – a birthday gift from a woman she’d used to work with, and it was a good wine. So good, in fact, that she had never found the occasion to open it. And then the bombs fell.

For two-hundred years, that wine had sat in that cabinet.

Well, damn. If surviving a nuclear holocaust wasn’t cause enough for celebration, what was? After all, if the rads didn’t knock her socks off, it’d be one hell of a vintage.

 

She fished herself a clean-ish mug from the dinted kitchen sink and popped the cork off the wine just as a light-hearted rapping came from the garage door frame.

Nora screamed and nearly dropped the bottle as she turned to see none other than Nick Valentine standing in her doorway.

‘Gee, doll. I know I’m hardly a sight for sore eyes, but try to think of my feelings next time,’ he chuckled.

‘Goddamn it, Nick,’ she chuckled in relief, still trying to catch her breath as a hand came up reflexively over her chest. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘What are you doing up this hour anyway? Trying to catch the sunrise?’

‘Had trouble sleeping,’ she said with a soft sigh. He nodded.

‘Well, I’m glad to see you’re not tripping over yourself to get away from me this time,’ he replied. ‘All these chips and wires aren’t contagious, you know.’

Nora frowned.

‘I haven’t been avoiding you,’ she said weakly. She didn’t even convince herself. ‘I’ve just been busy lately. That’s all.’

He smiled a little.

‘You know, Nora, you never have been much of a liar,’ he said, patting down his overcoat until he found his cigarette packet hidden in his breast pocket. ‘So which is it? Are you a running gun for the Institute now? Or have they killed you and replaced you with a synth?’

Nora looked over at Valentine with tired, sad eyes. She didn’t know what to tell him.

 

She was exhausted; Shaun was dying. She’d been working herself stupid for things she didn’t even believe in for so many months she felt like she didn’t know which way was up anymore. And now Nick was here, passive-aggressively grilling her for treating him like a leper for so long and it was all just too much for one night.

 

‘Nick, I...’ she began, struggling to find the right words.

And then he noticed the tears overflowing in her eyes, little streams of water spilling down her cheeks. And she collapsed onto the kitchen floor, her knees coming up to her chest and her arms wrapping around her legs as she started to bawl like a baby for the second time that night.

And Nick softened his stance immediately.

‘Hey, hey,’ he began warmly, stepping over to where she was huddled up on the floor and draping a friendly arm over her shoulders. ‘Ah, Nora – look at me. I come in here after not seeing you for months and this is how I treat you? I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

She didn’t answer; just shook her head vehemently, red tousles of hair falling to and fro. She wanted for him to know that it wasn’t all his fault, but in that moment she couldn’t find the words.

He slid the bottle from her hands and gave it a quick look-over before smiling.

‘How about I grab us a couple of glasses and we’ll sit down, have a drink, and you can pour your heart out to this old detective?’ he suggested.

She gazed up at him, and even with bloodshot eyes and the saddest smile he could ever remember seeing, he couldn’t help thinking she was beautiful.

‘Come on, kid,’ he smiled, tagging her playfully on the chin with his metal hand before offering her his good one to help her up.

She nodded, clutching onto his hand with hers as he hoisted her to her feet.

 

Valentine grabbed another mug from her kitchen cupboard and poured them each a generous serving of wine, and then they sat down together on the front step of Nora’s house to drink.

It was late. So late that their little settlement seemed abandoned, everyone tucked away in their own homes for the night. Nora had just assumed that she would be the only one awake, but she had forgotten that Nick didn’t sleep. 

But the moon was bright and the night sky clear, and there was something pleasant being outside now and getting to enjoy Sanctuary without the usual crowd. And, as uneasy as she was about what Nick would make of her Institute involvement, there was something relieving about finally seeing him; finally speaking to him again. Somehow, it made all her months of anxiety seem out-of-proportion.

They were silent for a while, both enjoying the peace the dead of night had to offer as they sat beside one another on the cold concrete.

Nick slipped a cigarette in between his pale lips and struck a match to light it.

Nora wondered whether he savoured this calm every night, or whether after so long it had just become tedious and lonely.

‘Nick,’ she began quietly. ‘Do you ever miss Jenny?’

He was quiet for a long moment after this, and she thought she heard him sigh a little.

‘Sure,’ he answered finally. ‘But I guess, after so many years, you learn to live with it. You never learn to like it, of course, but you get used to the idea that they’re never coming back. Mind you, I think Jenny’d take one look at all these new moving parts of mine and decide she wasn’t coming back anyway, but you take my point,’ he added with a smile.

‘Don’t be so sure, Valentine,’ Nora replied. ‘The girl was going to marry you. No reason to think she’d leave you just because you look a little different now.’

‘Well, she was going to marry the real Nick. So I guess she’d be breaking no promises by turning me down. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking on her sometimes,’ he said.

 

Nora smiled a little wistfully before leaning over and pinching the cigarette from between his exposed metal fingers, taking a long drag on it herself.

She closed her eyes then, and tilted her head back with a sigh of relief as the nicotine rush came over her, smoke pouring from her nose and between her lips.

Nick cast his eyes down at the empty road in front of him, trying not to imagine that look on her face in the bedroom.

‘You shouldn’t smoke. It’s a filthy habit,’ he smirked. ‘Besides, it’s no good for you.’

She smiled sadly.

‘What do I care?’ she answered. ‘I’ve lost everything.’

He frowned; he didn’t like her talking that way. 

Sure, she’d been through a hell of a lot. More than most people would have to deal with in a lifetime. More than she deserved. 

But, still, dwelling on the past like that – and boy did he’d know what that was like – it wasn’t the way you ought to talk if you’re trying to keep yourself going.

He leant over and stole his cigarette back from between her smooth fingers, slipping it back in between his own lips. 

It was just the tiniest bit wet from the saliva on her tongue, and a surge of excitement ran through his aging circuits at the thought of their shared fluids, making the muscles of his stomach tighten in anticipation.

‘Don’t get stingy on me now, Valentine,’ she smiled dryly.

He smiled.

‘When you start buying the smokes, doll, you can do what you like with them,’ he answered. ‘And anyway, you still haven’t told me the one thing that we both know is eating you. So tell me, how’s your boy?’

Nora sighed.

 

Shaun. What was there to say about Shaun?

He was a stranger? A monster? 

That even as a terminally ill old man, corrupted as he was by a lifetime of conditioning from the very people that took him away from his mother and murdered his father, he was still trying to connect with her? That when she looked into his sad, blue eyes she could see that he still longed for a history; a family – a mother.

How could she explain to him that when she infiltrated the Institute at long last, expecting to be met with an army of hostile synths, she found instead a welcoming, hurt old man who was eager to meet her, and so obviously hopeful that they would bond and that she would approve of him, his choices, and his life?

How could she explain to him that, though she knew what she had been doing for the Institute lately was wrong, she was doing it for the future of the Commonwealth; for the greater good?

How could she tell him that he had named her his heir as Director of the Institute, effective immediately upon her own baby’s death?

 

‘Shaun is… Shaun’s an old man,’ she said finally. And though she was talking to Nick, she realised then that it was the first time she had ever uttered those words aloud; the first time she had ever even admitted the truth of the situation to herself.

‘Nora,’ Nick began gently. He didn’t quite know what to tell her, but he knew that he wanted to say something – anything – to ease some of her pain.

But she just shook her head, roughly wiping away the little tears that rolled down her cheeks with the back of her hand.

‘He’s dying, Nick,’ she went on. ‘My little boy is an old man, and he’s dying of cancer, of all things.’

‘Christ,’ was all Nick could say. ‘Nora, look, if there’s anything I can do...’

‘Nicky, you’ve done so much already,’ she smiled at him warmly. ‘Anyway, what’s there to be done? This is not exactly the way I envisioned my life turning out, that’s for sure.’

‘You and me both, sweetheart,’ he smiled, taking a sip from his mug of wine, before grimacing so visibly it made Nora chuckle.

‘Eh. How long d’you say you had this?’ he asked.

‘Since before the war,’ she laughed. ‘Is it really that bad?’

‘Uh, it’s a little over-done for my taste,’ he frowned. ‘But you go ahead. Don’t let me hold you back.’

She swallowed a mouthful from her cup and winced. It was bitter and sour, filled with sediment and far too alcoholic. She almost coughed.

‘Oh, god. I’m sorry,’ she muttered, frowning as the acerbic taste lingered around her tongue. She tipped the remnants of her mug out over the wild grass of the front lawn. ‘It was good wine when I got it. Guess I should have enjoyed it while I had the chance.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ he smiled a little. ‘Ah, well. We live and learn.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she sighed. ‘I just hope it doesn’t make us sick.’

‘Lucky I’ve got an iron stomach,’ he joked. She laughed, despite herself, and shook her head at him.

‘That’s awful,’ she grinned.

‘Don’t like it? I’ve got two centuries worth of them,’ he smiled. She laughed.

‘Glad to hear you’ve been using your time wisely.’

He smiled, leaning over and offering her the rest of their shared cigarette.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It’ll get the taste of vinegar out of your mouth. Just don’t consider this my approval of you starting up old habits.’

She smiled at him, taking the cigarette from his hand and flopping her head down against his shoulder.

‘You’re a doll, Nicky,’ she said softly. He smiled.

‘I’m a sucker, is what I am,’ he answered dryly.

She smiled but didn’t answer him, and silence fell between them again.

 

It was an easy quiet, like the stillness of a warm bedroom before you drifted off to sleep, and Nora smoked the end of the cigarette and butted it out on the underside of her shoe all without moving away from the solace of Nick’s arm.


	5. Chapter 5

They sat that way for what felt like a very long time. Nick didn’t want to move. He liked the contact – the affection – between them, however platonically it was intended. But it was late, or very early, and as usual his conscience got the better of him.

‘Hey, kid,’ he nudged her. ‘Time for you to hit the hay, I think.’

She groaned a little, rubbing her face tiredly against the fabric of his patchy overcoat. Had she already fallen asleep?

‘Nora?’ he tried again. ‘You still with me?’

No reply.

He smiled to himself.

A little guiltily, he let his own head lean down and nestle into hers, a few moments of stolen tenderness as the skin of his cheek brushed against the soft hair on the top of her head, before prying himself away, lifting her up into his arms as he stood.

 

In all honesty, he’d expected for her to wake up and then get crabby with him for picking her up while she was asleep, but she was really out like a light.

Poor kid, he thought to himself. It must have been a hell of a few months for her. No wonder she’d been giving him the cold shoulder. Silly she thought she had to endure it all on her own though.

 

He carried her through the hallway and into her bedroom, where he pulled back the covers and lay her down in her bed.

It would have been one hell of an effort for him to lift the dead-weight of Nora’s unconscious body with one arm while flipping back the covers with his other when he was still human, but now he was made of metal things like that came easy.

He then pulled off her shoes and dropped the blanket over her, and she rolled over drowsily, nuzzling her head into a pillow.

He sighed.

 

Was it wrong for a beat-up old synth like him to feel the way he did for a woman like Nora?

He may have been a robot pushing two-hundred years old, but damn if she hadn’t made him feel like a hot-blooded young man again when he first laid eyes on her, busting him out of the vault Skinny Malone and his cronies had him holed up in.

He hadn’t even had the chance to talk Dino into fleeing the scene when she walked right up and blew a hole in his chest bigger than Fenway Park with a shotgun at close range and didn’t even bat at eyelid. Hell of a dame.

All red hair, curves, dark, determined eyes and legs that went on for days. And he’d always had a soft spot for women that knew their way around a gun. Maybe it was the danger of it all.

And then there’d been something else about her; something he’d noticed the very first time they spoke but he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Like the distant smell of perfume on a shirt that reminded you of an old lover, she reminded him of something, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

It wasn’t until they’d got back to his detective agency and she’d told him she’d been on ice for two centuries that it all started to make sense.

A breath of fresh air that had blown in from the old world; she was more than just a sight for sore eyes. 

It gives me hope, she’d said in her interview with Piper for the local paper about what she made of this junkyard of a world we’d rebuilt after the war.

Well, that’s sure not what he’d felt when he’d woken up as Institute trash after the bombs had been dropped. And, like her, he was one of the few people still around that could remember what things were like before the war.

And then when he heard her story, about her little boy being snatched up by the Institute boogeymen and how she, this fierce mama bear, was gunning down the Commonwealth to get him back. Well, helping her just felt like the right thing to do.

It would take one hell of a dame to have gone through everything she’d gone through and still come out the other side with that kind of hopeful outlook on life. And the Commonwealth needed more people like that.

But anyway, he could dream about her as much as he liked; it was never going to happen. A guy like him didn’t deserve a woman like her, and there was no way she’d be interested. Aside from the fact he wasn’t much more than a glorified calculator and she was still hung-up over her dead husband, he didn’t think he was quite her type.

He’d heard her mention Nate a couple of times – a remark here, a comment there – and he’d gathered enough to know that her husband had been about as different a guy as you could get from someone like him.

He sighed again. No. All up, the odds weren’t looking great for Nick Valentine.

 

Only an hour or so before dawn, Nick decided it was probably high time to leave and let Nora get some sleep without him skulking around.

He passed through her bedroom door, pulling it gently closed behind him as he backed into the hallway. Before he locked himself out completely, however, he looked and saw her wriggle and roll over in her sleep, sighing peacefully, and he smiled to himself.

Well, she deserved good dreams, if nothing else.


	6. Chapter 6

She dreamt of him that night.

At first an uncomfortable dream; an eerie reflection of her worries, perhaps. Her stresses.

She was in the Commonwealth, wandering. She had to collect pieces of paper – clues, her mind told her.

They were everywhere, fluttering in the breeze as she scrambled to snatch them from the air, to pick them all up, shoving them urgently into the pack she was carrying.

And they kept getting heavier, every piece. But she couldn’t stop; she needed them to find Shaun.

The clues would give her Shaun – she knew that much.

She could barely hold the pack anymore; it was getting so heavy. She hauled it up onto her shoulder and pushed on, collecting the pieces with renewed determination.

But they kept getting heavier and, little by little, she felt herself being crushed underneath their weight. But she couldn’t abandon him. She couldn’t leave Shaun.

And there, out of nowhere, stood Nick Valentine. A familiar face; a warm smile.

He seemed level-headed and unflappable; a calming presence when all the world around her seemed to be falling to pieces.

His metal hand latched onto her own and he lifted her through the crumbling ruins of Boston, and then suddenly they were in his poky little office in Diamond City. But it felt cosy; it felt like home.

And then he smiled, stepping forward and kissing her fully on the mouth, and in her dream she wasn’t surprised by this at all; it seemed very normal.

She closed her eyes and kissed him in return, and as their mouths moved together his hands started to search over her body, and their rhythm got faster and more desperate.

And then he pushed her back into his desk and she hopped up, spreading her legs apart for him.

He hitched her skirt up – how long had she been wearing a red dress? – fumbling to unzip his trousers, and then, his penis already hard and strangely human, he drove himself inside her and began to thrust. 

Unceremonious, maybe. But she needed it so badly.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders tightly and hooked her legs around his hips as she clung to him, a mixture of heedless arousal and possessiveness.

And then he pushed into her and they both fell back onto the desk, knocking over all of his case files – everything.

Paper scattered everywhere, falling from the air like the flying clues of Boston. Only this time, she didn’t care.

She ground her hips into him as they made urgent love on his desk in amongst the never-ending paper rain, and she didn’t feel stressed or anxious or afraid or anything. Only the aching desire growing between her legs and the dire imperative that whatever her friend was doing, he wasn’t to stop.

‘Nick,’ she moaned needily into his ear as he fucked her.

‘Uh, god, Nick,’ she panted again, this time through half-lidded eyes as her bedroom in Sanctuary began to materialise around her.

 

Wait – what did she just say?

 

‘Nick?’ she said aloud this time, a mixture of shock and sleepy arousal as she woke up with a start in her bed.

She glanced around the room, bleary-eyed and a little disoriented, sunlight pouring in through the cracks in her makeshift blinds.

She was alone. It had just been a dream.


	7. Chapter 7

She flopped back down in her bed with a sigh.

There was a familiar warmth and slickness building up between her legs, and she realised with a frustrated groan that she was still very much aroused; even if it didn’t feel like it to her, it had been over two-hundred years since she’d had sex.

And then all those visions from her dream of her and Nick suddenly flooded back into her mind’s eye and she felt… guilty and wrong.

 

Nick was her friend; he didn’t think about her that way.

Not to mention that he, as a synth, probably didn’t even have sex. Aside from the fact that he likely lacked the essential parts, he probably didn’t even feel the urges.

_Of all the men_ , she thought to herself. _Of all the men you could have dreamt about, you had to pick the one it was impossible with._

She sighed.

Okay. So she needed to come; there was no avoiding that now. Then she’d go wash, get dressed, and get on with her day.

 

She wriggled free from yesterday’s clothes that she must have fallen asleep in, kicking them out of her bed, and leisurely she slid her right hand down between her legs to where her muscles tensed and her pussy cried out for attention.

A little moan escaped from her lips as her index finger slipped over her silky engorged clit. God, she was soaking already; this wouldn’t take her long.

She touched herself again, her eyes pressed tightly closed, and the image of her perched up on Nick Valentine’s desk with her legs spread wide around his hips as he pumped his cock in and out of her came rushing into her mind.

She stopped quickly.

_No_ , she told herself. _Don’t think about Valentine._

It was just a dream, after all; no need to complicate their relationship over a dream.

And yet, nothing else that she thought about seemed to work.

She tried in vain to think about things that had aroused her in the past; old faithful thoughts that she used to get off over all the time: that sweet German exchange student who she’d fooled around with in high school, who came before she’d even touched him the first time they got together; the tall, dark-haired female classmate she’d dated in college, all tanned skin, pert breasts and young desire; not even the cute bartender from West Boston she used to sleep with every now and again before she met her husband that liked to get bound, gagged and pegged.

She even tried thinking about things that used to arouse her about Nate but that she had avoided lately because they usually made her too sad. But it was no use. Her body just wasn’t responding.

 

It didn’t help that the more she failed the more frustrated and tense she began to feel, until at last with an audible sigh, she ran her clean hand exasperatedly through her hair and gave in.

_Fine_ , she surrendered to herself. _Think of Nick then – but just this once. We’ll think about him, we’ll come, and we’ll get him out of our system._

So she did. And almost as soon as she had given herself permission, her fantasies now went above and beyond where her dream had ended: she on all-fours on his desk as Nick stood up and took her hard from behind; kneeling down between his legs as she sucked him off; imagining the look of lust and pleasure on his face as she blew him. Trying to envisage the taste of his tongue after he’d eaten her out; or what his strange, synthetic come must feel like spurting out over her naked body.

And in barely a minute she felt her orgasm building, and then she was coming like a freight train that wave of pleasure spilled over and she found herself whispering Nick’s name, over and over to herself alone in her room.

And then the wave subsided, and left her, a flushed, sticky mess, naked and tangled in her bedsheets.


	8. Chapter 8

Nora got up, peeking out of her bedroom to make sure the way was clear, before dashing naked into the bathroom.

She filled the wash-basin with the river water that they’d hooked up to come through the taps of all the homes in Sanctuary, and bathed herself. And as she scrubbed at her face and over her body with the soap and a flannel, she tried to put all thoughts of Nick Valentine behind her.

She dried herself, throwing on her red chequered shirt and some slacks before heading out into the kitchen for scrounge up something to eat.

It was there that she spotted a little piece of paper lying on top of the dinted old bar next to where she usually kept the coffee percolator. Curiosity got the better of her, and she found herself stepping over to have a look.

There, in half-rushed, half-cursive handwriting was a note which read:

‘Morning, doll. Or afternoon, as you’ll probably wake late.  
Take it easy today. You’ve earned a rest.  
I’m heading into DC to go over some notes. Will be back tonight if you need to talk.  
Might bring some better wine this time though.  
Yours,  
NV.  
PS. Helped myself to your coffee. I cleaned up. Should be plenty left for you.’ 

 

Nora smiled crookedly to herself. So much for putting Nick Valentine out of her mind.

A pang of guilt came over her as the memories of the previous evening rushed back into mind.

Damn it, Nick. He’d always been there for her; always had her back. Never once had he wavered in his loyalty toward her. And how had she repaid him?

By avoiding him like the plague for months on end, and then balling her eyes out all over him after he’d finally managed to catch her.

And he’d even put her to bed after she’d so gracelessly fallen asleep on him, hadn’t he? That’s why she woke up still in her clothes the next day.

She sighed.

She’d been a prize asshole to Valentine. And she felt terrible about it.

But there would be time for grieving over past mistakes later; she’d done enough of that lately. Now was the time to set things right. And there was one thing that she was going to make her top priority now.

The only time Valentine had ever asked her for help, and she’d ignored it to find her son. Well, now her son was found. It was time to track down Eddie Winter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Part II: The Line Begins To Blur**

When Nick knocked on her door late that night, Nora had already set everything up and was waiting for him to arrive.

The file he’d given her months ago on Eddie Winter lay open on the dining room table, as did the six holotapes that they had collected of Winter’s so far, strewn atop the splayed folder.

Nora herself was seated at the table, working under the harsh glow of the kitchen light on some notes and a sketchy map she’d drawn up, all ready for Nick to pour over with his analytical mind.

When she heard him at the door she waved him in absently, not even glancing up from the line she was adding to the map lest she lose her train of thought.

He smirked.

‘Well, I got us some wine,’ he began, bottle in hand as he strode toward her. ‘But it looks like you’ve got a different plan for the evening. Settling in for some homework?’

She looked up from the files and smiled.

‘Of a sort,’ she answered. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking it’s about time we closed the case on Eddie Winter, once and for all.’

Nick raised a hairless brow in surprise.

‘No kidding?’ he smiled, setting the bottle of wine down on the table a little carelessly now as he pulled up a chair by her side. ‘Well, how are we doing on the hunt for his tapes?’

‘Take a look,’ she replied, gesturing loosely toward the mess on the table. ‘If you said there are ten in total, we’re over half-way. Now, I’ve been drawing up a map here based on the data I’ve been able to find on my Pip-Boy. I’m thinking we may have to pay some of these old police stations a visit. You up for a few days of traipsing around the Commonwealth with me?’

Nick beamed.

‘You just say the word, kid. I’m ready when you are.’

She grinned, shifting the map she’d made over so that he could have a look at it.

‘I know it’s not pretty, but I think it’s functional,’ she began defensively. He smirked, but didn’t say a word. ‘I’ve drawn this up for our trip. If we want to make the best use of our time we should probably follow this route,’ she pointed.

He leant over, brow furrowed as he focused over all the lines and little landmark symbols she had drawn on her map. It was crude, but he could make heads and tails of it. Just about.

He reached out with his good hand to tilt the page in his direction when he accidentally brushed against the bare skin of her hand as it rested against the paper.

 

Nora smiled, feeling flush of heat rise to her cheeks, and Nick smiled too, a little bashfully, before turning his attention back to the map.

He cleared his throat, a vestigial human reflex, and took up a pen from the table.

‘So, uh, this is good, but there’s just one little thing I’d change. Do you mind if I…?’ he trailed off, gesturing with the pen. She nodded quickly.

‘No, please. Go ahead.’

‘Well,’ he went on, amending the route on the paper now as he spoke. ‘Best way is, as far as I can see, is to hit all the stations like this. North-east to south-west, coming from Sanctuary, and then once we get down here over in South Boston, we’ll just have to double-back north until we get to Andrew Station where Eddie’s holed himself up.’

‘Oh, I’m such an idiot,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something. Here I was so worried about the damn police stations I forgot we had to go break Eddie out of his bunker.’

‘No, you did good,’ he smiled. ‘Anyway, judging from where we think the last tapes are, there’s no real smooth way of getting there.’

‘Well, it sounds like a plan, then,’ she said with a smile.

‘It sure does,’ he answered with a grin. He was happy about this, and it made her glad that she could do something for him for once.

 

‘Well, any last questions?’ she asked, glancing up at the clock on the wall in the living room. ‘Before I go pack my bags and turn in for the night?’

He smirked.

‘Yeah,’ he answered. ‘Just one; why now? I mean, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but you’ve got other things you could be getting on with. Maybe more pressing things. It wouldn’t kill me to wait a little longer.’

Nora frowned a little apologetically.

‘Well, honestly Nick, I’ve been putting this off. Not because of you, of course – or anything like that. But just because I was busy – ’

‘Finding your son,’ he finished.

‘Yeah.’

He nodded.

‘Can’t blame a mother for making her kid her top priority,’ he said. ‘But, I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten about this old hunk of metal yet.’

‘I could never forget you, Nicky,’ she said earnestly. ‘We’ll get Winter. You have my word.’

He smiled.

‘Thanks, kid. You know, I appreciate you doing this for me.’

‘Well, it’s not before time, Nicky Valentine,’ she grinned. ‘Hey, maybe when we get back we can bust out that new bottle of wine you bought to celebrate the independence of Eddie Winter’s head from the rest of his body?’

He chuckled.

‘It’s a date,’ he smiled.

 

_A date?_ Nora thought to herself. A feeling of nervousness washed over her stomach. _Not a real date, stupid. Just a…_ date _date._

And anyway, why was she even thinking that? It was just Nick, for god’s sake.

And then her mind raced back to those thoughts, those private sultry imaginings she’d had about him while she was alone in her bed earlier that same day, and she felt her cheeks redden.

She peered over at him as he stood by the table, utterly indifferent to her as he skimmed through the notes she’d made on the possible locations of Eddie’s holotapes, tapping a new cigarette from his packet.

She shook her head.

‘Well, I’d better get to bed,’ she said quickly.

He looked up at her.

‘Sure. Go do your human thing,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll hold the fort. Want me to wake you in the morning? If you don’t mind, I’d like to get an early start tomorrow. The sooner we hit the trail, the sooner we get Eddie.’

She nodded, not quite looking him in the eye.

‘Yeah, okay,’ she answered. ‘Well. Goodnight.’

‘Night, sweetheart,’ he smiled, lighting his cigarette and sitting down at the table.

He was as likely as not to sit up all night pouring over the case files and doing all the actual detective-work Nora had attempted but probably failed at. And he was too sweet to tell her otherwise.

Ah well, she thought to herself as she shuffled down the hallways toward her bedroom, if it kept him busy for the seven or eight hours she was hoping to be out for, he was welcome to it.


	10. Chapter 10

‘Rise and shine, kiddo,’ Nick said softly, his exposed metal hand resting on her shoulder and shaking her gently awake as she slept on her side.

Nora groaned.

‘What time is it?’ she croaked before smothering her face into the pillow in a futile attempt to block him out. It wasn’t time yet, surely. She felt like she’d only just fallen asleep.

‘Time to get up,’ he answered with a smile. ‘Come on. I got you a coffee and ran you some water in the bathroom sink; get it while it’s lukewarm. I also fixed you up something to eat before we head out. It’s waiting for you on the kitchen bench.’

She sat up in bed, despite her drowsiness, and shot him a funny look.

‘Nick? You did that all?’ she smirked.

He shrugged, not wanting to come across over-eager.

‘Yeah, well,’ he began. ‘Might as well make myself useful while you’re dead to the world. Can’t just sit there and twiddle my thumbs all night.’

She grinned.

‘Well, aren’t you just a doll.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he brushed her off, a little embarrassed. ‘Just hurry up and drink your coffee. You’ll need all the energy you can get today. We got a lot of miles to cover.’

 

Nick handed over the hot mug of coffee before leaving her to rise, and Nora got to enjoy a few warming sips while still snug and cosy under her covers before her guilt overwhelmed her and she forced herself out of bed.

She took the drink with her as she dragged her feet toward the bathroom, but just before she left the hallway she caught a glimpse of him in the living room.

 

He hadn’t hurried her especially, but it was clear from the way he sat, perched vigilantly on the edge of his chair by the dining table, chain-smoking with his brows knitted tightly together, that he was stressed.

Nora sighed.

Better make this a quick rinse, she thought to herself.

She freshened up and headed back to her bedroom where she pulled on her under-armour – an old but reliable bodysuit that she’d scavenged from a fallen soldier of the Brotherhood of Steel – and then made her way out to the kitchen to eat the breakfast Nick had made for her.

 

In design the meal was simple, consisting entirely of a heated-up can of Pork’n’Beans on some Sanctuary-made corn-bread. Nick rubbed the back of his neck uneasily as Nora sat down at the bar stool by the bench to eat.

‘Well, you know, I don’t really cook much these days,’ he said apologetically.

‘Looks good to me,’ she answered with a smile. And she meant it.

 

She ate quickly, and soon enough she had finished and was clipping her varied pieces of armour together over her bodysuit. She then checked one last time that her heavily-modified shotgun was fully loaded, before taking up the travel pack she’d prepared the night before and swinging it over her shoulder.

Nick stood up from his restless perch and looked over at her expectantly. She smiled.

‘Ready to his the road, partner?’

He nodded.

‘Lead the way.’


	11. Chapter 11

They had made good time.

When they’d set off from Sanctuary that morning the sun was just dawning in the sky, cold dew resting undisturbed over all the road, plants and houses, and the only other ones awake were the brahmin.

By sunset that evening they had already collected another two of Eddie’s tapes, honed in further on the locations of the remaining pair, and were now standing outside the BADTFL regional office in Cambridge.

 

Nick frowned as he gazed up at the crumbling remains of the building. He wasn’t looking forward to rummaging through this old ruin. But business was business.

Nora noticed that look on his face, and stopped in her tracks to check in with him.

‘You all right, Valentine?’ she asked, pulling down the bandana that covered her mouth and nose.

‘I used to work here,’ he said gruffly. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with.’

She nodded, covering her face again and following his lead as they made their way into the crumbling offices.

Inside, it was like many other derelict buildings in the Commonwealth; dark, littered with two centuries worth of debris, and probably not structurally sound.

The front doors weren’t locked, which made Nora raise her gun and watch her periphery for signs of sudden movement as she and Nick crept on carefully down the first corridor.

Loud voices preceded them, echoing down the concrete halls from the room directly ahead. Both of them froze; sure enough, this building wasn’t abandoned.

She glanced at Nick and he nodded; Raiders in the next room. They spoke brazenly between themselves, completely at ease and not expecting their party to be crashed.

Nick inched slowly into one side of the doorway and she the other, Nora keeping her eyes on him for the unspoken signal.

A beat passed. The raiders argued.

Nick looked at Nora. He nodded.

 

They stormed into the room, guns blazing. Nora fired at the man on the left as Nick took down the man on the right.

She pumped the fore-end of her shotgun just as the turret in the middle of the room spun around, registering that she and Nick were intruders. She pulled the trigger, the full force of the blast landing firmly in the body of the machine, and it shattered into pieces.

One of the men writhed around on the floor, disoriented but still alive. Nick stepped forward and shot him.

Voices yelled out from another room now – afraid but threatening. Nick glanced over at Nora quickly.

‘More of them,’ he grunted, waving for her to get down before he took cover behind a desk. She nodded, crouching down behind the rubble of a nearby wall.

 

When the new raiders, alerted by the sounds of the firefight, came running into the room through a large hole in the wall, Nick stood up from his cover and landed shots on both of them in quick succession.

The first died instantly; a bullet to the head. The other shrieked in pain, pierced through the chest, and collapsed onto the floor.

Nora pumped her shotgun and strode over to the wounded woman, who stared up at her with pained, pleading eyes.

Nora shot her in the face. Cold as a Courser. The woman’s partially headless body slumped back into the wall, spurting blood and twitching erratically.

 

Nick and Nora stood in the middle of the silent room, the air thick with the smell of disturbed dust and gunpowder, the walls and floor splattered with fresh blood.

A beat passed; no one else came.

Another beat passed, and still they were alone.

 

Nora realised now that her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, and she exhaled deeply. Her hands were sweaty, and she wiped them against the cloth of her bodysuit in between the pieces of her armour.

Nick stood inhumanly still; machine parts ticking over with silent precision as he waited, poised like a predator and ready to strike at the next wave of raiders. But the fight never came.

Slowly, he eased up, turning to her.

‘Keep your guard up,’ he warned. ‘But the coast looks clear.’

 

They pressed forward, sneaking through the empty hallways as they climbed the building, methodically checking each room as they passed to make sure that they were indeed alone.

Finally, they made it into the offices on the second floor. It seemed empty and undisturbed. Nora lowered her gun.

‘I think we’re safe here, Nicky,’ she sighed. He nodded, walking up to a battered old desk.

‘Better start digging through all this mess then,’ he answered, idly thumbing through a burnt folder. ‘Eddie’s tapes aren’t going to find themselves.’

 

They started sifting through the decaying office like a couple of well-practised thieves; looting old buildings like this was something they’d done a thousand times before.

Nick combed through boxes and old stacks of paper for anything still legible and in one piece, while Nora was busy scrounging around for stray caps and objects that might be of some use to one of the settlements.

In the far end of the room was an area fenced off behind jail bars, and she’d thought initially that it must have been some kind of lock up. When she got closer, however, and noticed that it was filled with rusted metal shelves and boxes of miscellaneous goods, she realised that it was probably the station’s evidence room.

 

She forced the lock with a bobby pin and let herself in. Inside, there were a whole lot of valuable things sitting untouched along the oxidised shelves, and Nora smiled; looks like she hit the jackpot.

She set to work snatching up ten-mil cartridges, ancient confiscated cartons of cigars, full bottles of booze and narcotics with swift fingers, stuffing them all into her pack. And then she saw, with a surge of excitement, a battered orange holotape sitting on a shelf in amongst the junk.

She grabbed it, turning it over and reading the scrawled lettering eagerly.

‘We are done,’ it said. She frowned; it didn’t look like it was one of Winter’s. Funny name though, she thought to herself. She wondered if it might be some long lost break-up message after a lover’s spat.

Reflexively, she jerked open the tape player on her Pip-Boy, shoved the holotape in and hit play while she went on pillaging.

 

‘Detective Valentine,’ the voice began on the tape. ‘Nick. Listen… I’m sorry.’

Nora stopped dead in her tracks, the tape still rambling away in the background.

 

Had she heard that correctly?

Was this for Nick? _Her_ Nick? Well, if there’d been another cop called Nick Valentine working in and out of the same building in Boston before the war, it’d be a hell of a coincidence.

 

She turned now and glanced up at him, and, sure enough, Nick was there, standing by the open door of the evidence room, staring back at her as after he’d heard his name ring out through the otherwise soundless station.

Whatever the tape was, he seemed to recognise it. But his face was blank; unreadable.

 

Nora’s hand fumbled over the Pip-Boy as she hurriedly searched for the stop button. But he stopped her.

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Listen to it. It’ll explain everything that happened better than I care to.’

‘Nick,’ she began, finally halting the voice recording. ‘I don’t have to. Honestly, I didn’t even know what it was when I picked it up –’

‘It’s all right. There were bound to be some skeletons in this building,’ he said, before knitting his brow. ‘I meant that figuratively, although I think the guy in that room over there might’ve been a colleague of mine.’

Nora frowned.

‘I don’t mean to pry.’

‘You’re helping me track down Eddie Winter, aren’t you?’ he said, a little softer this time. ‘If anyone’s allowed to pry, it’s you.’

She smiled at the reassurance, but still felt a little uneasy about it. But Nick waved her on.

‘Go ahead,’ he said again. ‘I’ll be over here. Come find me once you’re up to speed.’

 

Nora watched as he stepped away from the evidence room and she sighed to herself, setting the tape back to the start and hitting play. The voice began again.

 

‘Detective Valentine. Nick. Listen… I’m sorry. You’ve got every right to be upset, but you need to believe me when I tell you I had no idea. Operation Winter's End was my baby. I believed in it. I still believe in it. They kept us all in the dark, me included. I got briefed this afternoon, and they laid it all out. The whole thing. Winter's deal with the DA. His agreement to bring down the other families. His idea to record the holotapes and incriminate all known associates. And them needing a legitimate op, and a real task force, to make it all look like Winter was the focus.’

 

Nora glanced up at Nick, a mixture of shock and indignation rising up inside her as her mind began to put together all the pieces.

He was hovering in the other room, half-heartedly looking through some old files, but he was listening.

She wanted to say something – to tell him something to make him feel better – but nothing came to mind.

The tape played on.

 

‘It was the plan all along, Nick. There's nothing we can do. Winter was a stoolie for the feds. He reported directly to the BADTFL. All on the books. For his cooperation, Winter will be granted total immunity. It's over. Effective immediately, Operation Winter's End is to cease all investigations and operations. The task force is hereby disbanded. We played our part, pal. Not the part we thought, but hey. It happens. Now we're just another box in the file room.

‘Nick, listen to me. Everything that's happened. With Winter. With... Jenny. It's more than any one man should have to handle. You need help. Boston PD has been working with the eggheads at C.I.T. Some new program they have to deal with trauma. Scanning brainwaves or some such. I'll get you the info. You're going. That's an order.’

 

And the holotape ended, just like that.

Nora found herself standing in the run-down old station with Nick, a volatile storm of anger, frustration, sorrow and sudden understanding rising inside her.

The building was silent again, and she gazed over at her friend. He looked sad.

‘So that’s where it all started,’ she concluded at last.

‘Guess you know the story from there,’ he answered. ‘Brain scanned by the Institute, and I wake up in a trash-heap looking like this and find the world’s gone to hell. Or, I was _born_ – I don’t know. Two-hundred years and I still haven’t got my head around it.'

She frowned.

 

They weren’t usually touchy-feely with one another; neither Nick nor Nora were really that way by nature. But in that moment she couldn’t help but reaching out for him, closing the space between them in a few determined steps and wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she pulled him into a firm hug.

She felt his body go rigid in her arms, surprised and unused to the contact, but soon he seemed to relax into it, and finally he brought his arms up, wrapping them around her waist in return. He sighed.

‘Thanks, kid,’ he said wistfully, looking down at her with a sly smirk.

She gazed up at him warmly, pulling free from their embrace now.

‘We’ll get Eddie,’ she vowed.

‘Sounds good,’ he smiled. ‘Sure beats standing around here all day feeling sorry for myself, anyway.’


	12. Chapter 12

Eddie Winter’s ninth holotape was hidden down in the basement. But if Nick felt any relief at having collected nine of ten tapes, it was short-lived.

Nora had hacked a terminal in the main room in search of more clues to help them zero-in on he whereabouts of the final tape while Nick sorted through yet more boxes of two-hundred year-old police files. What she found, however, did little to ease his stress.

 

The memo on the computer was labelled ‘Winter Informant’, so it seemed to Nora like a good place to start. She clicked on it, opened the document, and began reading.

‘Case log… blah, blah, blah,’ she mumbled to herself, eyes skimming over the words. ‘Picking up a lot of chatter recently from Eddie Winter’s boys asking after a Jennifer Lands of South Boston,’ the file read.

Jennifer Lands, Nora mused. That name felt familiar.

Wait – Jennifer Lands? Was this Nick’s Jenny?

Nora turned back to the computer with renewed vigour.

‘Ran background on the name and turns out she's engaged to Nick Valentine, one of the Detectives running Operation Winter's End,’ she read aloud quickly and quietly. Nora felt a knot rise in her stomach. ‘Request made to supervisors to fast-track the two of them for witness protection (or at least inform them of danger) but request was denied. Higher-ups don't want to compromise ongoing BADTFL investigation… oh my god.’

‘What’re you muttering about over there?’ Nick asked, glancing over at her with a playful smirk.

Nora’s heart sank. She met his gaze with guilty eyes.

‘Nick...’ she began.

‘What?’ he frowned. ‘What did you find?’

‘Nick, it’s… Jenny,’ was all she managed to say, but that was more than enough to soften his hard stare and send him running over to the computer terminal.

Valentine stood behind her, reading the document over her shoulder quickly.

Finally, he sighed.

‘Jenny’s death...’ Nora ventured uneasily.

‘Could’ve been prevented. I know,’ he answered darkly.

He didn’t seem so angry in his voice. She thought there was a hint of resignation there, if anything. But suddenly he lashed out, kicking a nearby desk with his foot and denting it badly, a deafening bang ringing out through the empty space.

Nora jumped, and Nick seemed instantly apologetic.

‘Sorry, kid. I… let’s just keep going. Too many damn memories in this place,’ he said.

Nora nodded in agreement, but she couldn’t help herself frowning out of concern for her friend. There was something so soft about Nick that she sometimes forgot he was made of metal.

 

It was already long dark out now, and there was nowhere for them to go until morning.

They had cleared out the office building so, unhappily, they set up camp for the night in one of the empty office rooms. Nora huddled up on a lumpy, ruined sofa, a thin blanket from her pack draped over her, as she tried to get in a few hours of sleep before the sun rose.

 

Usually, when they travelled together like this, Nick would hang around while she slept; almost in the same protective but caring way as Dogmeat, and it made her feel safe, even in the most dangerous areas.

But tonight it was almost as if Nick were avoiding her, keeping his distance as he drifted in and out of other rooms, lost in thought and old memories.

Occasionally she would catch a flash of yellow eyes and a cigarette bud burning in the darkness by a far-off window, and it made her sad.

 

This place was bad for Nick. She’d known that tracking down Winter – and all the complicated memories dragged up along with that – was going to be hard for him. But what she had never anticipated was how hard this was for her.

She couldn’t sleep she felt so churned up about the situation. After everything that Eddie Winter had done – not just to Nick and Jenny, but to every life, and every family he affected – to think that he had just walked away scot-free after all that was utterly infuriating, to say the least.

What it must have felt like for Nick… well, it hurt her just to think about the pain, the anger, the betrayal, and the helpless frustration that he must have gone through; that he must still be going through.

And there was something else that bothered her about this situation; like an old lawyer’s twitch.

Criminal prosecution, or even anti-corruption within the police force, had never been her speciality, but even Nora couldn’t help but feel that everything that had happened to Nick had not only been unfortunate; it had been illegal.

Back-room deals; agreements with crime bosses; their reluctance to get Nick and Jenny out of danger for the sake of their operation – which had turned out to be a dummy operation anyway and resulted in an innocent woman’s murder.

No. Something about the whole situation reeked to her.

She’d have taken on Valentine’s case in a heartbeat – and worked pro bono too, and not just because he was a friend. This case felt so… slimy. She wouldn’t have been surprised at all if she found out that there were deeper layers to this.

And poor Nick. He’d just been the wrong guy at the wrong time, and managed to find himself on the receiving end of all this underworld wheeling and dealing. It just wasn’t right.

 

But, of course, there were no governments or courtrooms anymore; no law out in the Commonwealth; no justice system.

Even if their had been, these were ancient crimes – both the victims and the perpetrators long dead. All loose ends tied except Eddie Winter and Nick Valentine, probably the only two men left alive that even knew what happened all those years ago.

And then there was also that little issue about Nick being a synth. He, technically, was not the same person to whom all this wrongdoing had happened. Sure, he had the same memories and personality, and he was just as affected as the real Nick would have been, but still, it would be a hard one to argue in court.

 

But that was not to say that there was no justice to be had in the Commonwealth, because there was violence.

And if it gave her friend even just the tiniest amount of comfort and reprieve from his two-hundred year purgatory then she’d be the first one holding Winter down while Valentine punched.

 

Nora frowned to herself, shutting her eyes with determination in the darkness. Eddie Winter’s death couldn’t come soon enough.


	13. Chapter 13

She had never seen him like this.

As soon as they’d hit up the last police station and uncovered Winter’s final tape, Nick was on the warpath.

Usually so calm and easygoing, Nick was normally happy to watch her back and follow her lead. But now she almost struggled to keep up as he charged forward.

 

It was nearly nightfall by the time they reached Andrew Station, but he was showing no signs of slowing down.

He stormed in ahead of her, no matter what lay before them, gunning down raiders, ferals, and super-mutants with the kind of cold precision that ran a chill down organic spines whenever they heard the word ‘synth’.

 

Nora felt incredibly stressed; her usually level-headed partner was a reckless machine of pent-up bitterness and fury, and he marched into firefights as if they were a damn picnic.

On more than one occasion she found herself running to him, almost throwing herself in front of him like a human shield as she worried about him getting himself killed, though she knew she shouldn’t have; that old fool was made of metal, not blood and guts like her. If either of them could take a few bullets and come off none the worse for wear, it was him.

But, despite all her misgivings, crouched down behind a pile of rubble in the abandoned train station, bullets whistling overhead and cracking into the concrete that protected her, Nora knew; there was no stopping Nick Valentine now.

Eddie Winter’s last moments were upon him, whether he knew it or not.

 

Moving through the old brick hallways and tunnels in the ground, Nick and Nora made short work of anyone fool enough to oppose them. She was sweating now, short of breath and heart racing as she fought by her friend’s side, but that was not what was troubling her.

She stole a glance at him once they had put down the last of the raiders. He looked tense; brow lined deeply with concentration, yellow eyes emotionless; determined.

He was so torn up about this – about Jenny. And something about that made her feel… angry.

It took her a moment to realise what it was, but then it hit her.

_Why doesn’t he feel that way about me?_ An ugly voice inside her mind said resentfully.

She recoiled from the thought, frowning at it. But at the same time she knew it was true.

She was jealous of Nick’s devotion to her, of how much he cared – how much he still cared – after two-hundred years. And after he, technically, was not even the same person as the old Nick. Just a synth with the same memories, the same personality. But then, this was Nick Valentine she was talking about; and he was nothing if not loyal.

Suddenly, a familiar voice broke her from her thoughts.

‘That filthy toad’s right on the other side of that door,’ Nick said darkly. ‘Why don’t you do the honours?’

Nora looked up from her musings and noticed that he had led them down a dark corridor. Sure enough, at the very end of the room stood a heavy reinforced metal door – the kind built to withstand a nuclear blast – and a small keypad next to it off to the left.

She nodded.

‘Sure,’ Nora answered, lowing her gun and moving to the keypad.

One, nine, five, three, seven, two, eight, four, zero, six, she entered. 

Sure enough, the door swung open.


	14. Chapter 14

‘The fuck?’ an angry voice called out from the room within.

That voice – the voice she’d heard so many times over the holotapes – gravelly, tough, filled with self-confidence. She’d recognise that voice anywhere: Eddie Winter.

Standing there in the flesh before her was a stocky old ghoul, dressed in clean but plain lounge-wear and looking out at them irritably.

Funny, she thought to herself as she looked him over, he was smaller than she’d imagined.

She walked toward him now, gun lowered but still in hand, and he scowled.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded, annoyed.

The nerve of this little bastard. After everything he’d done and he still felt like he could just stand there in front of these two armed intruders and act like a tough guy. She felt so angry she could laugh.

‘Ah, come on! Eddie! It’s me!’ she cried in an awful Irish accent. ‘Your old pal Molly McFuckYourself.’

Winter sneered.

‘All this time, and the first person to walk through my door is a wise-ass,’ Eddie said. ‘Well, you are easy on the eye. So that’s something. Just how the fuck did you get… No. No way. Not after all this time. Don’t tell me you actually cracked my code? In the holotapes?’ he pieced together, making himself laugh. ‘Ha ha ha! Well, hey. It’s only been… what? Two-hundred years?’ he chuckled to himself.

Nora wasn’t smiling.

‘Well, look… I’m not sure what you thought you’d find – gold, jewels, the secrets of the universe. But you get me. One guy. A ‘ghoul’ I guess you’d call me. Just living. Surviving. And what I got, you can’t have. That code… it was a joke,’ he scoffed. ‘I just wanted to prove how dumb those feds were. Turns out, pretty dumb. So take your asses someplace else.’

Nora was about to open her mouth to say something when Nick moved forward, striding into the bunker from the shadows behind her.

‘I’m not going anywhere until I get what I came for,’ Nick uttered darkly.

He stood in front of Winter, only a few feet away, amber eyes cold and fixed on the ghoul. The rifle in Valentine’s hands was not raised, but it was certainly there, pointed down at Winter’s kneecaps.

A moment passed, and Nora wondered exactly how Valentine was going to handle this.

Eddie Winter raised a skinless brow.

‘Yeah? And what’s that? And who are you, huh? You look kinda familiar. But… what are you, some kind of robot? Is that what it’s like out there now? A world of robot overlords? I knew it.’

‘The name’s Valentine. Nick Valentine. Remember me?’

Winter frowned.

‘Valentine? The cop? Is that who you’re supposed to be? Sorry pal, but you ain’t Nick Valentine. You’re just some kind of… machine.’

Nick didn’t rise to the bait.

‘You killed my fiancée. Jennifer Lands. There are some crimes even you can’t get away with, Winter,’ he accused.

Eddie smirked.

‘Your fiancée? You mean Valentine’s fiancée? Pretty girl. Shame what happened to her. But hey you… or, you know… the real Valentine. He shoulda backed off when he had the chance,’ Winter said. ‘But what gives, robot man? Why do you even care? Some girl gets whacked two-hundred years ago, and you come into my home, acting like a hard guy? Christ, look at you. You’re not even alive.’

 

Anger burned in Nora’s gut like a fire. Winter sure knew how to wind people up, and if Nicky was above taking the bait, she sure as hell wasn’t.

She raised her shotgun now, pointing it straight at Eddie’s head. Nobody insulted this vault-dweller’s friends like that and got away with it; she was two centuries past taking things lying down.

 

Winter eyed her warily, but didn’t react. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him.

Nick kept his cool; Nora guessed he’d had a long time to think about this moment. A smirk danced across the corners of Valentine’s lips, and he raised his gun as well.

‘Then I guess I’m in good company,’ he answered. ‘Welcome to your last stand.’ 

 

Eddie Winter raised his own gun now but it was too late. With just a few well-placed shots, Winter was on the floor bleeding out.

Nick stepped over to the ghoul as he writhed around on the floor, the last of his consciousness leaving him.

‘Not… yet…’ she heard Winter breathe through gritted teeth, before Nick put a final bullet in his head.

 

Nick stood over Eddie Winter’s body for a while, gun hanging by his side as he gazed down at the lifeless old man on the floor.

He looked neither happy nor sad. Just… accepting.

Finally, he turned to Nora, breaking their silence.

‘We’re done here,’ he affirmed quietly. ‘But there’s one more thing I’ve got to do. I… I wouldn’t mind the company, if you wanted to tag along.’

And then, without waiting for a reply, Valentine turned and walked out of the bunker.

 

Nora sighed. He didn’t seem to want to dwell on the place, and that was probably not a bad idea.

She followed Nick back into the tunnels, leaving Winter’s body for the radroaches.

 

Nick drifted wordlessly down the corridors, lost in his own thoughts.

He seemed to know where he was going, like he’d been over this trail a few times before, and she realised then that he probably had.

She frowned; she hoped that revenge had given him everything he’d hoped. But she knew deep down that it hadn’t. 

 

‘Hey, Nicky?’ she tried hesitantly as they walked.

‘Jenny,’ was all he uttered in return, and that simple little word hit Nora with an unexpected wall of enviousness and hurt.

She followed Valentine without question after that.

 

They passed through what looked to be the basement of an old speakeasy and up through a trapdoor that took them back to the surface, standing in the ruins of an ancient diner. Outside it was night time, the air cold and crisp, the only light coming from the brightness of the moon. 

Nick kept going, leading them to a road by the banks of the bay before, finally, he paused.

 

‘This is it,’ he said, staring down sadly at the broken concrete of the street below.

He shuffled his foot over it before crouching down, running a hand over the ground. ‘In this spot, two-hundred years ago, one of Eddie’s boys put a bullet in Jenny Land’s back,’ he confided. ‘Now Eddie’s as dead as Jenny… and Nick. And I… I’m at a loss.’

He stood up straight now, turning to face her with the faintest hint of a smile on his face. It wasn’t a happy smile, or even a relieved smile, but it was warm and it was caring, and Nora could tell that there was a lot of tenderness behind it.

‘All I know is that, without you, Eddie’d still be at large,’ he admitted earnestly.

Nora smiled, stepping toward him and placing a comforting hand on his arm.

‘Taking down Winter was a big deal,’ she began gently. ‘Are you doing all right?’

He sighed.

‘I don’t know. It’s a lot to take in. Winter was it – the only reminder left of the original Nick Valentine. The last proof outside some, long-lost Institute archive I was ever just a mechanical copy of some cop from a bygone era,’ he frowned. ‘I’m not sure how to feel.’

Nora smiled.

‘But don’t you see, Nicky?’ she heartened. ‘You’re finally free. There is no ‘other Nick’ anymore; just you.’

‘I wish it was that easy,’ he answered sadly. ‘But it’s not. ’Cause I was Nick Valentine. I had his memories, his fears – all that poor bastard’s hope. I remember getting the call to head to some lab in Cambridge to get that… neuro-trans-whatever. And the next thing I know I’m in a trash-heap – my family, my home, my entire life gone. Then I discover that all those things that…. they weren’t even mine. Everything I ever was belonged to Nick. And I’d hoped with Winter gone, the last hint of that old world snuffed out, I could… I could finally be free,’ he confessed.

Nora frowned; she’d never seen him so... lost. But he looked over at her and smiled.

‘But being out here with you, what I… what I finally realised after all this time is that taking down Winter, it wasn’t about Nick or Jenny or even you or me. It was about justice. About doing what’s right. And that act of goodness, that’s ours. All the good we’ve done, that’s ours, and ours alone. And even if that’s the only thing in this world that I can ever claim as mine – not Nick’s, not the Institute’s, but mine – then I can die happy,’ he smiled at her fondly. ‘And none of it would have ever happened if it weren’t for you. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to thank you for that.’

She smiled at him but shook her head.

 

She wanted to tell him that he was his own man; that he was her friend – probably the best she’d ever had. That he meant so damn much to her, and that she was so thankful to him for sticking by her through everything.

She wanted to tell him that Nick and Jenny would have both been proud of him, she felt sure. And that Eddie Winter deserved what he got, and they’d made the Commonwealth a safer place by getting rid of him.

And maybe, most of all, she wanted to tell him that if she had learnt anything at all since she’d woken up and found the world in ruins, her husband dead and her son missing, it was that your future and your life was something that you had to make. It was not given to you, and it was no more innate in flesh-and-blood people than it was in synthetic ones.

 

But then he laughed, shifting his weight on his feet and shooting her a wry smirk.

‘Well, come on then,’ he said. ‘We’re not helping anyone standing around here.’


	15. Chapter 15

It was very late in the night by the time they got back to Diamond City, but Nick seemed to be more like his old self again.

The marketplace looked almost deserted at that time, only a couple of gaudy hanging lights and the smells of mud, stagnant water, and old noodles to greet them. Still, Nora thought to herself, it felt good to be back in a safe, familiar town.

Nick unlocked the door to Valentine’s Detective Agency, the two of them keeping their voices down as they crept inside in case Ellie was sleeping upstairs.

 

The agency was exactly as Nora remembered – poky, dimly lit, and with overflowing filing cabinets crammed into every spare inch of space. It was warm and smelt of cigarettes, and she smiled fondly, glad to be back after so much tumult.

She flopped down wearily into Nick’s chair, kicking off her shoes and setting to work unclasping her heavy outer-layer of armour.

Nick smiled, striding past her as he flicked on the transistor radio that sat atop some breeze-blocks in the back of the office, turning down the volume quickly. The soft swing of Bob Crosby’s ‘Happy Times’ came floating out from the well-worn speakers, filling the soundless room with a crackling analogue warmth.

Nora smirked at him.

‘What about Ellie?’ she whispered, gesturing towards the ceiling. Nick smiled.

‘Kid’s out like a light about this time,’ he replied quietly. ‘It’s when I can get away with playing back old tapes for cases I’m working on.’

‘She’s a sharp girl,’ Nora answered wryly. ‘I’m surprised you think you can get away with anything around her.’

He grinned.

‘This old bot’s got some tricks up his sleeve yet,’ he answered. 

Then, out of the corner of his eye he spotted, on top of his desk just to the left of Nora, that bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for a rainy day – or a special occasion. Well, he thought to himself, tonight seemed a little of both.

He stepped to the desk, picking up the bottle and raising it playfully for Nora.

‘Care for a nightcap?’ he offered. She smiled.

‘I think it’ll put me to sleep,’ she answered. ‘But, sure. If you’re having one.’

He took out a couple of tumblers from a cabinet drawer, setting them down on his desk and pouring them both a generous glass.

‘Ah!’ she chuckled, her hands waving about helplessly as she tried to stop him. ‘That’s enough!’

He smirked.

‘You could do with a stiff drink,’ he teased. ‘Loosen you up a little.’

‘Nicky Valentine, if you were a flesh-and-blood man I might think you were trying to get me drunk,’ she teased.

He smiled a little but said nothing, instead sliding her over her whiskey.

Nora took a sip from her glass and relaxed back into the chair as Nick strode across the room, leaning back against Ellie’s desk and helping himself to a cigarette. He struck a match, and Nora sighed contentedly.

‘Okay, maybe this was a good idea,’ she conceded. He smiled.

‘I can always tell when a dame needs a drink,’ he drawled, lighting the long pale cigarette lulling between his synthetic lips.

‘You don’t say,’ she smirked. ‘Too bad you don’t put those detective skills to better use. You might really have a future in it.’

‘That’s real cute,’ he replied, a stream of smoke blowing out through his nose, but he couldn’t hold in his smile.

 

She’d been worried about him earlier, when they had stood together by the bay after they had killed Eddie Winter; Nick had seemed so lost and hopeless. But now, after having some time to take it all in, he seemed in good spirits, the two of them back to joking and ribbing each other like they usually did.

Nora remembered the surge of relief she’d felt after she killed Kellogg, the man responsible for her husband’s death. It had been so satisfying at the time, but in the long run she realised that it made little difference; it hadn’t brought back Nate, and Winter’s death wouldn’t bring back Jenny either.

But Nora wasn’t about to rob Valentine of his moment of peace after the storm – and a storm he had been stuck in for two-hundred years, at that. At least she’d been frozen all that time; if she’d had as long to hunt down Shaun – to think about it; to stew over it – it would have probably driven her mad.

 

She took another long sip from her whiskey, savouring the feeling of warmth as it spread over her tired body. She sighed.

‘Nick,’ she began solemnly. ‘I’ve been a lousy friend.’

He smiled.

‘Yeah. Watching my back all these months, helping me take down Eddie Winter. Lousiest I ever had.’

She smiled a little, but shook her head.

‘I mean it, Nick,’ she pressed. ‘There’s a lot of things I… I wish I’d done differently now. I’m sorry I put off helping you deal with Winter for so long.’

‘Your boy could have been in trouble out there,’ he replied. ‘You didn’t know he… well, you didn’t know. Eddie was holed up in his self-contained prison; he was a sitting duck for us. Besides,’ he added kindly. ‘I already waited two centuries. What’s another few months?’

‘Sorry I ignored you, after the Institute,’ she went on. He frowned.

‘Yeah, well, that was unnecessary,’ he agreed. ‘But you weren’t to know. I guess I can understand why you might’ve been concerned what an old synth like me would make of you buddying up with those guys. But what’s done is done. You and I are are all right.’

Nora smiled up at him fondly, moved by his words. 

‘You’ve always been too good to me, Nick,’ she confessed earnestly. ‘I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.’

‘Yeah,’ he said with a smirk. ‘You must’ve ticked off somebody upstairs to get landed with me, that’s for sure.’

She grinned.

‘Can’t you just take the damn compliment for what it is?’

‘I do, kid,’ he smiled gently. ‘And I feel the same way.’

 

He swirled the last of his whiskey around in his glass as he leant back against the desk, giving her a sly wink behind a haze of smoke.

And Nora felt… nervous.

There was something about Nick. Something charming between his warm human side and his rigid synthetic side. Something handsome even.

Nora found herself gazing up at him now and smiling warmly, though neither of them had said anything for a few moments. And then she found herself thinking about him again, wondering what his metal hand would feel like running across her skin; what he would taste like on her tongue.

Heat coursed through her cheeks as her heartbeat quickened its pace, and the muscles of her abdomen tightened in anticipation. She looked down at the ground shyly, clenching her fists.

Maybe it was the whiskey, or maybe it was just him. But suddenly Nora stood up from her chair, heart racing, and closed the space between them in a few steps.

She reached out, grasping his tie firmly in her hand, and yanked his body in toward hers, nearly knocking his hat off as her head tilted up and she pressed her lips hard against his.

 

Nick’s body turned to stone in response; cold and unreciprocal as Nora’s mouth pressed hot and heavy into his.

A long, lingering peck, Nora’s lips stayed on his, ardent but unmoving, for what felt like an endless minute. But still he made no move in return. And, slowly, her heart sank.

Stupid, stupid Nora, she cursed herself. What a dumb, thoughtless, stupid thing to do.

She broke their one-sided kiss, avoiding his eyes as she tried to step away, but then his hands came up quickly, clutching her firmly around her waist.

‘Nora,’ he whispered, still taken-aback.

He tilted his head down, trying to meet her gaze, and finally she looked at him petulantly. She was blushing; embarrassed and unwilling to even try to explain her sudden impulse away. But he smiled.

And then he leant into her and, before she knew it, Nick was kissing her.

 

It felt… different to what she had imagined. 

His skin looked more rubbery than it felt, and his lips, though pliant and responsive as they brushed against her own, were a little cold.

But, as the tension knotted in her stomach, that old familiar slickness rising between her thighs, she couldn’t deny that she was enjoying these new sensations.

 

Nick worked her lips apart with his, kissing her openly; hungrily. She felt his strange, rough tongue snake into her mouth as he deepened their kiss, and she couldn’t help but let a soft, needy moan escape from her throat in response to his boldness.

She had gotten used to Valentine always being so… gentlemanly, and considerate all the time that the idea that he might actually want her as well made the muscles in her pelvis tighten and twitch.

 

Nick groaned – a strange, lust-fuelled, guttural sound that she had never heard him make before – and before she had time to react he had traded places with her, stepping her backwards until her backside bumped into Ellie’s desk.

Nora bit her lip; did he mean this the way she thought he did?

She hopped up onto the desk, spreading her legs apart and hooking them around his hips, pulling him into her with her feet. He reciprocated by digging in his fingers high upon her thighs near the swell of her ass, and grinding his hips into hers; an old human instinct, but one that made Nora gasp and throw her head backwards, lost in a haze of arousal and flustered excitement.

Oh my god, she thought to herself. It’s just like my dream. Only she just wished now that she really had been in a dress instead of her ex-Brotherhood jumpsuit.

 

Nick’s mouth broke away from hers then as he began to trail kisses down the exposed skin of her neck, and Nora sighed and leant into the feeling, her arms hidden underneath his long coat as they wrapped around his waist, hands caressing his back.

He felt so solid under there; firmer than any human she’d ever felt before. But still, as she ran her fingers over the thin fabric of his shirt, tracing the strange musculature underneath, she could tell by the way he moved that he felt it.

Her breath came hot and heavy as he nipped at her skin, his good hand still grasping her thigh, helping her push her into him as she roughly ground her hips against his, chasing that delicious friction as her frustratingly clothed pussy rubbed against his hard body through his pants. 

His metal hand ran up her side as they moved together, pawing over her body before finding the strapped mound of her breast. He kneaded the soft flesh roughly, as much as he could through the thick cloth of her jumpsuit, and she moaned in his ear.

 

Her body wanted to – god, the way that old synth was working her up was something criminal – but then, as she pressed her eyes closed and leant back, savouring the heady, pleasurable feelings he elicited in her, suddenly all she could think of was Nate.

A sick, guilty feeling washed over her, and she froze up in Nick’s arms. 

When his lips and teeth ran over her skin all she could imagine was her husband’s; when his hands groped over her breasts and up her thighs, all she could see was Nate’s face, flushed and beautiful and yearning for her in the heat of the moment as they had done so many times before.

And suddenly she felt like crying.

 

Nick felt the sudden change in her movements and he stopped, breaking his ministrations to check in with her.

‘Nora?’ he panted, concerned yellow eyes searching for hers in the muted light.

‘Nick, I… I’m sorry,’ she shook her head, confused. Her desire for him was not entirely gone, but that only made her feel more ashamed. ‘I can’t do this. It’s just too soon. I’m sorry.’

She pushed his body away from her, palms flat against his chest, and he tried to ignore the bitter feeling of rejection that rose up inside his stomach.

‘S’all right, doll,’ he nodded, still catching his breath as he took a step back from her, letting her hop down from the desk.

He was clearly hot and bothered himself, and she felt awful about it – what a time to stop the poor guy – but he was kind about it, like he always was.

‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ she said again, staring down at the floor guilty. He tried to smile.

‘Got nothing to apologise for,’ he answered. 

They stood opposite each other for a few moments, Nick unsure of what to say, and Nora too cowardly to even look him in the eye as she thought about her husband.

 

What in the hell would Nate make of all this? She thought. Fooling around with some other guy only months after he died?

Well, not months; it had been years. Over sixty of them. But to her it had been less than one year.

She realised now that they’d never talked about it. In all their years of marriage she thought that they must have talked about everything, but she realised now that they’d never actually talked about what would happen if one of them died.

They had always assumed – promised each other – that they would be together until they were old. Parted by natural causes, not a world war. Would Nate have wanted her to stay alone? Mourning for him for the rest of her life? Or would he have been understanding of her taking another lover? Maybe another husband even, given enough time?

 

Nick broke her from her sombre musing then, grabbing his cigarette packet from his breast pocket but not taking one out.

‘I’m just… gonna step out for a while,’ he muttered. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but he wasn’t sure that it came out right. ‘Fresh air, and all that.’

She nodded, and half-smiled back before he disappeared out the door.

When he was gone she felt her knees crumple, her back sliding down against Ellie’s desk, and she buried her face in her hands.

 

What the hell was she playing at? She cursed herself. And poor Nick – she hadn’t meant to lead him on like that. She’d honestly wanted to – she thought she could – but when it came down to it all she could think of was Nate, and how dirty she felt betraying him.

Or maybe it was Nick she had betrayed. Maybe both.

‘Goddamn it, Nate,’ she found herself sobbing into Nick’s empty office, tears spilling over in her eyes. ‘Just… just go away or come back. I can’t stand this!’


	16. Chapter 16

**Part III: Hurt**

Finally, it was all over.

Shaun was dead. Her baby was dead.

 

She clutched at his withered hands, trying to warm them as they grew cold.

She knew he was gone. She knew he couldn’t feel the cold anymore. She knew that even if she could somehow keep him cosy and warm it would not bring him back.

But she did it anyway, hating the thought that he should be uncomfortable; hating the thought that he might really be lost to her forever.

She stayed by his side as the colour left his face. From rosy and life-like to pale and ghostly-white in only an hour or so.

She stroked the skin on his wrists, ran her fingertips over his nails, rested her head against his lifeless, rigid form as he lay in his deathbed. 

Her little baby. Her Shaun.

She didn’t want to leave him now; not yet, at least. 

She didn’t want him to be afraid; she didn’t want him to be alone. It might have taken her all his life, but she was here now. Mother was here, and everything was going to be all right.

 

She wept a little, but noiselessly, and in waves. There were some wounds so great even the body could not properly process them.

She held his hand as it grew stiff and hard to move. She kissed it and pressed it lovingly to her warm, tear-soaked cheeks. He may have been pushing seventy years old when he finally succumbed to his illness, but he would always be her little baby.

Little fingers, a great big smile. Bright blue eyes – so his dad’s. Late night feedings on the sofa, falling asleep with him in her arms. The first time he locked eyes with her. The first time he laughed. Ticking his little knees and his round baby-belly. 

She would have done anything for him. She almost did.

And still it wasn’t enough.

But it was all over now. Shaun was dead.

And she was free.


	17. Chapter 17

**Part IV: I’m Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally**

 

Something shoved her in the back, and she groaned, her eyes pressing shut as she fought to stay asleep.

Again, something hit her, and then again. Something warm and wriggling, snuggling up next to her under the blankets – a person?

 

Bleary eyed, she blinked around the room. It was bright; white surfaces reflecting the artificial light from all angles.

She frowned; she had fallen into her bed at the Institute so late last night she just felt utterly ruined. Anyway, after everything that had happened, what did it matter if she slept in a little?

 

A little arm wrapped its way around her.

Nora froze. She hadn’t dreamt it; there was someone there.

 

She shot up so quickly now she nearly fell out of bed. Sure enough, staring back at her with bright, happy eyes was a little blond boy, grinning from ear to ear as he interpreted her sudden movements for playfulness.

Shaun? Her Shaun?

No, it couldn’t be.

And then the memories slowly refocused in her waking mind, and she remembered: no, this was the synthetic version. The child prototype.

She had met him before – she had thought he was her real son once; a cruel trick that ‘Father’ had played upon her when they first met. Ever since then she had avoided the boy. It was too painful to remember; too painful to be reminded of the childhood she had missed.

But now the boy beamed up at her, happy just to see her awake, and something in her aching heart stirred.

 

‘Hi, mom,’ he greeted cheerfully. ‘They told me I had to wait for you. But you were taking so long I had to come and get you.’

Her mind rushed over all the strange new information he had just given her.

‘Shaun…?’ she began unsteadily, awash with a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Her heart felt shattered and swollen with love all at the same time to look over her beautiful child. ‘Who… who told you to wait? Why were you waiting?’ she stammered. ‘Did you just call me mom?’

He shrugged, looking a little confused now himself.

‘Well, yeah,’ he answered simply. ‘What else would I call you? You’re my mom,’ he said, before frowning a little. ‘Are you feeling okay? Is that why you were sleeping in so late? Are you sick?’

She shook her head quickly.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, honey, I’m fine. Just… just a little tired, that’s all.’

Shaun nodded, her answer seemingly good enough for him.

‘Oh – before I forget,’ he said, reaching over and fumbling around in his pocket for something, fishing out a small, orange holotape and handing it to her. ‘Here. Father told me to give this to you but not to listen to it. I don’t know what it says, but I think it’s important.’

 

Nora took the tape from between his little fingers and gazed at it. A message from her son, almost certainly.

She felt afraid to listen to it; afraid that once the tape had finished playing – once she’d heard the message it had to offer – this final exchange between her and her elderly boy would be over and gone forever. 

 

‘Is… is it true that he died?’ Shaun asked innocently. ‘I liked him. He was always really nice to me.’

Nora looked up warmly at the little boy as he sat clumsily on her bed, and she smiled sadly.

‘I’m afraid it’s true, baby,’ she affirmed, trying to give him a reassuring smile. ‘I’m… I’m going to miss him.’

‘Are you okay, mom?’ he asked, child-eyes wide with concern as tears welled up in her eyes again. She nodded, wiping her face.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied.

‘Well, could I get you something maybe? Do you want a drink of water?’ he offered.

Nora smiled at him fondly, touched by his thoughtfulness. She was about to refuse, but then the thought occurred to her that this may just give her that moment alone she needed to listen to the holotape.

‘You know what? I’d love a coffee,’ she smiled, leaning over to her pack beside the bed and feeling around inside for some loose caps. ‘Why don’t you run down to the cafeteria and grab me one? You can get yourself something too.’ 

‘Really?’ he grinned happily. ‘Anything I want?’

She nodded, smiling as she held out a handful of caps for him to take.

‘Anything you want,’ she promised. ‘My treat.’

Shaun grinned. 

‘Okay!’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back – don’t go anywhere!’

 

He took the caps from her hand and bounced from the bed now, scrambling to his feet as he raced for the door.

But then, just before he passed through the doorway and left Nora’s room, he paused in his tracks, suddenly gripped by something. 

He turned around, trotting back toward her a few paces, concern scrunching up his little face.

 

‘You’re… you’re not gonna leave me, right?’ he asked, his fear so plain in his guiltless eyes. ‘You’ll still be here when I get back?’

Nora sighed deeply; it seemed that even her synthetic son knew how to get straight to her heart.

‘I’ll never leave you, baby,’ she smiled. ‘And that’s a promise. Now, go, go! I’ll be waiting for you!’

‘Okay!’ he nodded with new-found determination, falling quickly and easily back into his previous eagerness now that his worries had been allayed. ‘I’ll be back soon!’

 

Nora smiled after him fondly for a few minutes after he had rushed off down the Institute hallways. Even after everything that had happened – even after surviving through the worst night of her entire life the previous evening – it was hard not to find his sincere and guileless enthusiasm for the world endearing. And maybe even just a little infectious too.

 

Her finger hovered over the play button on her Pip-Boy for so long it almost caught her by surprise when she finally pressed down on it, beginning the recorded message on the holotape.

‘If you are hearing this, then the time has come. I am gone,’ her adult son’s cold, formal voice crackled out through the tiny speakers. ‘I can no longer look after young Shaun. I hoped that you might be willing. He has been reprogrammed to believe he is your son. I hope that was not too presumptuous on my part,’ he said. She smiled at this; it was presumptuous of him – incredibly so. But that had never stopped him from doing what he wanted before. ‘Both he and you deserve a chance to… to be a family,’ he said. ‘Please, take care of him.’

 

And that was it. The tape clicked to a stop.

She took a deep breath.

Such a short message. She didn’t know what else she had been expecting, really.

In the short time they’d known each other, both of them working in their respective ways to rekindle their relationship, he’d never been very forthcoming about his feelings. 

She had told him while he was alive that she loved him – that she’d always loved him and that she always would. And she was glad of that now more than ever; there could have be no doubt in his mind before he passed away as to how she felt about him, about how much he meant to her.

In a way, Nora thought to herself, this may have been Shaun’s way of telling her how he felt. His way of acknowledging that she wanted them to be a family; his way of recognising that she loved and missed him and wanted to be with him.

Maybe this had been his plan all along. His last gift to his mother. The gift of lost years; the gift of a second chance.

 

The fact that the child was a synth raised a few questions, but it didn’t bother her. And there was one man, and one man alone, to thank for that.

In the beginning she had been wary of Nick Valentine. Expecting him to betray her – expecting him to be secretly allied with the mysterious Institute somehow, just because of what he was. Funny how the tables had turned.

Instead, it took Valentine and the warm, caring, and infinitely selfless person that he was, to show her just how wrong her first impressions of synthetics were. Well, maybe now that she was the Director of the Institute she would have the opportunity to improve the lives of synthetic people in the Commonwealth. She certainly owed Nick that much. 

 

Shaun, her little synthetic son, came running back into her room then, breaking her from her reverie. He beamed to find her still there, sitting up in her bed, blue covers up to her waist, just like she promised.

‘I got you a coffee!’ he announced proudly.

He was out of breath, rosy cheeks flushed and straw-blond hair ruffled; it seems he had run all the way there and back. And she gazed over at this little boy – _her_ little boy – as he looked up at her with such love and affection on his little face, and her heart swelled.

 

Nora chuckled, shuffling over in her bed, throwing back the blanket and patting the empty space beside her, and Shaun grinned.

He clambered up carefully onto the bed, one little hand clasped tightly around a closed cup which smelled like a hot coffee while the other clutched onto an Institute food packet, and he slid beneath the covers next to Nora – next to his mother.

She took the coffee from him, careful not to spill the hot contents, and then took the opportunity to sneak an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in sideways for a cuddle.

‘Mom,’ he grinned, embarrassed. 

She smiled, letting him go a little reluctantly.

‘What’s this, anyway? Is that all you wanted from the cafeteria?’ she asked, pointed at the Institute food packet he was ripping open in his hands.

‘This is my favourite,’ he said, dipping his finger greedily into the substance and then into his mouth. ‘Food supplement 77. G6 tells everyone that it’s been discontinued, but he’s kept a little to give out to the people he likes.’

‘G6?’ Nora asked.

‘My friend G6-12. He’s the synth that works at the cafeteria,’ Shaun chatted blithely, before looking up at his mother with guilty eyes. ‘Uh, you won’t… get him in trouble because I told you that? Now that you’re the Director?’

Nora laughed.

‘My lips are sealed, kiddo,’ she smiled. ‘As long as you give me a taste of that. I’ve want to see what all this hype is about.’

Shaun smiled, tilting her over the packet as his mother dipped her finger into the colourless paste.

‘Oh,’ she said, recognising the flavour as it coated her tongue. ‘It’s like chocolate.’

Shaun made a funny face.

‘Chocolate?’ he said. She looked aghast.

‘Chocolate – _chocolate_ ,’ she repeated, as if that would clarify everything. But he just looked at her quizzically.

‘Hmm. You need to get up to the surface and try some real food, methinks,’ she said. ‘Fresh fruit and vegetables; barbecued meats; sweets that don’t come in a… goo. You know, there’s a good noodle place in Diamond City. We should go some time.’

‘Diamond City?’ Shaun repeated, blue eyes wide with excitement. ‘Have you been there?’

She chuckled.

‘You bet. Plenty of times,’ she answered. ‘I’ve even got a friend who runs a detective agency there.’

‘Really?’ he asked, disbelieving. ‘You’re not lying to me?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ she grinned. ‘I’ll take you some time. Would you like that?’

His little face lit up so brightly she thought her heart would burst.

‘Yes! I’d really like that!’ he said hurriedly. ‘Do you really mean it? You’ll take me to Diamond City? When can we go?’

‘Uh, well,’ she thought to herself. ‘Well, I guess whenever, really. Maybe, in a day or so. Is that okay with you?’

Shaun nodded eagerly, grinning from ear to ear, and she laughed, ruffling the top of his messy hair playfully.

‘Why all the love for Diamond City, anyway?’ she asked. ‘What exactly do you think is there?’

Shaun shrugged, sheepish all of a sudden.

‘Well, nothing especially,’ he began. ‘Just… just this one time, I modified a radio so I could listen to the broadcast from above ground, and I heard Diamond City. The music was neat, but I didn’t really understand a lot of what they were talking about. Ever since then, I guess, I’ve kind of wanted to go,’ he confessed. ‘Oh, but don’t tell Dr. Watson I did that. Or I’ll get in trouble.’

 

She smiled over at him dearly. The poor baby had been couped up inside this compound all his short life. The stark, white walls of the Institute were everything that he knew. It was not fair. It was hardly a life.

‘Shaun,’ she began earnestly. ‘You know, now that I’m the Director you don’t have to stay here in the Institute anymore. In fact, it would make me really happy if you wanted to come and live with me from now on, so we can see each other every day. Would you like that?’

He gazed up at her, his little face lit up with happiness and disbelief, and maybe just a hint of apprehension. And then he nodded – one quick, decisive bob of his head.

‘Okay,’ he smiled. 

And Nora grinned and pulled him with both arms into another heartfelt embrace.


End file.
